ST: From huts to high rises - Queenstown Through The Years

From huts to high
rises
Queenstown consisted of hills, swamps and cemeteries before it was
transformed into Singapore's first high-rise housing estate. Below
are edited excerpts from a new book - titled 10-Stories, Queenstown
Through The Years - charting the 55-year-old estate's colourful
history as seen through the eyes of its residents.Sunday Times, The
(Singapore)
News, Pg 30
December 2, 2007

WHEN Ang Beng Teck was born in Boh Beh Kang (Hokkien for No Tail
River) in 1928, he was just one more bawling addition to an
extended household that comprised six families living together
under one attap roof. He did not want for minders or playmates,
growing up in close quarters with the families of his five paternal
uncles.

'Hut', however, was not a fitting description of the Ang abode. It
had 'over 10 rooms', and a large living room and kitchen - all
built by his uncles and his father, who was just seven when he
arrived in Singapore from China.

In those days, births and deaths, and every life event in between,
were shared experiences of joy and grief for the whole kampung
(Malay for village).

'Last time, people were so close. If anything happened, all the
kampung people would gather,' Mr Ang recalled.

Not any more. 'Now, if anything happens, nobody would even know
about it,' he lamented.

But his wizened features reveal no hint of surprise at this loss.
After all, Mr Ang has witnessed far more tumultuous changes in his
79 years - with World War II putting an abrupt end to his kampung
days and the transformation of the physical landscape itself into
today's Queenstown.

Boh Beh Kang was relatively remote, and deliberately so, for its
earliest residents sought to escape the chronic congestion of the
city for the relative peace of this backwater area.

Whole lives were enacted within the shadows of Hong Yin Sua
(Hokkien for Hong Yin Hill) and Hong Lim Sua (Hokkien for Hong Lim
Hill), the two hills that dominated Boh Beh Kang.

Before the War, people spent more time interacting with one other
at work and play. There was no electricity. There was no radio or
television; and certainly no Internet or online gaming to keep one
away from others. After dark, the most one could do was to read a
book by the glow of a kerosene lamp, as the former Boh Beh Kang
villagers recalled.

Other pastimes involved socialising. After the day's toil in the
farms, at the nearby Hock San brickworks or the quays of the
Singapore River, where some villagers worked as coolies and odd job
labourers, the adults - mainly men - would visit the local coffee
shop to catch up with friends.

The humdrum of farm work was occasionally interrupted when someone
got married. 'Last time, getting married was different. It was like
in the movies - the newly-weds would wear red clothes and sit in a
rented horse carriage,' Mr Ang Kok Tee, 84, a relative and fellow
Boh Beh Kang villager said.

Wedding feasts were self-catered. 'We'd slaughter the chickens,
ducks and pigs and cook them. There usually weren't many tables -
just for people in the kampung,' recalled Mr Ang Beng Teck.

'Then when the bridal couple arrived and everyone was seated,
they'd set off firecrackers,' Mr Ang Kok Tee recalled. The men and
womenfolk attended the wedding feast separately.

'The women would be invited to attend in the afternoon. The men, in
the evening,' said Mr Ang Beng Teck. But both men and women would
sit together at the gambling table, playing card games and
reviewing the day's chap chi ki (Hokkien for local lottery)
results.

'Nowadays, people play with dollars, but in those days, they'd
wager only three or five cents. People were more thrifty,' Mr Ang
Kok Tee recalled. Not that there was much money around, nor a bank
in sight.

Whatever cash they owned was hidden in a quiet corner of the home,
Mr Ang Beng Teck explained.

The idyllic, if spartan, life of the Boh Beh Kang villagers was
rudely interrupted when the Japanese invaded during World War
II.

'When the Japanese bombed this place, the whole stream was on fire!
When the artillery shells came, you couldn't see them. But you
would hear their sound 'shiu shiu shiu shiu'. And you'd know they
are here,' Mr Ang Beng Teck said.

Life was even more difficult under the Japanese.

'Food was hard to get. Everything had to be registered before you
could get your rations. If you want rice, oil, or kerosene, you
have to register with the kampung chief and show him your ration
card.

'Even to get roti (Malay for bread) you need to register. The roti
was as hard as rocks because they used red palm oil to make them,'
Mr Ang Beng Teck said.

Resourcefulness saw the farmers of Boh Beh Kang through those lean
times.

Mr Ang Kok Tee recalled: 'There was not enough rice, so we grew our
own tapioca and sweet potatoes in the hills and mixed these with
rice.

'Children today are so lucky! If food is dropped onto the floor,
they wouldn't eat it. Last time, we would just pick it up, blow
blow, and eat it.'

Post-war life was no easier. Mr Ang Kok Tee, who worked as an
odd-job labourer at the brickworks and later at the ABC Brewery,
said: 'We earned just over 10 cents a day. Of this, we spent two
cents on rice with some curry gravy on it. And then, we had to get
back to work. No kopi (Malay for coffee), no drinks. There was no
money for kopi. We just drank tap water.'

Despite this, the old men still miss the simplicity of life in the
old days.

'Life in the past was better. We didn't earn much, but things were
cheap too. No need to pay water or electrical bills, nothing!

'Just $2 a year for the address, that's all,' Mr Ang Kok Tee
said.

But village life at Boh Beh Kang was quickly drawing to a close.
The British government had made plans to develop the land for
Queenstown. And by the 1960s, the villagers had to move out.

Mr Ang Beng Teck moved to Tanglin Halt where he opened a grocery
store. The transition to an urban existence was hard for the former
farmers.

'Of course, in the beginning, we were all very sad and frustrated.
We were really not used to the new environment,' Mr Ang Beng Teck
said. 'When we moved to Tanglin Halt, the rent was $380. But it
kept increasing every three years. In the kampung we didn't have to
pay for water.

'Everything became a financial burden - the bills, the rents. Even
to go out, you needed transport fares."

But Mr Ang Beng Teck was resigned to the change. 'Even if you were
not used to it, you had no choice in the matter.'

------------------------------------------------------------

How 'Boh Beh Kang' and 'Chap Si Lau' came to
be

QUEENSTOWN was developed from swampland that was home to a famous
Hokkien village called Boh Beh Kang, which means No Tail River in
Hokkien.

Boh Beh Kang refers to the stream that flowed between two hills,
Hong Yin and Hong Lim. The name came about because the villagers
could not identify the source of the stream.

The stream branches off in two directions; south-east to the
Singapore River, and north-west to Sungei Pandan and eventually to
West Coast. Hence, it appeared that there was no 'tail' to the
stream.

The residents were mostly immigrants from Tong'an in Fujian, China.
Many were members of the Ang extended family.

When the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT) started planning
Queenstown in the 1950s, engineers reclaimed the swamp and the Boh
Beh Kang stream became a large concrete monsoon drain running
between Commonwealth Avenue and Stirling Road. The drain still
exists today. Older residents still refer to the canal as Boh Beh
Kang.

The canal was partially covered when the Mass Rapid Transit (MRT)
viaduct was built in the mid 1980s. Today, it re-emerges as the
Alexandra Canal after the Queenstown MRT station, flowing east
towards Kim Seng Road.

In the early days, Queenstown was distinguished by the 14-storey
Forfar House, (see below). That is how the place became known as
Chap Si Lau, Hokkien for 14 storeys.

FROM wooden walls, mud floors and congested shophouses to concrete
units in a planned housing estate, the early residents of
Queenstown certainly had a lot to learn and adapt to.

One such lesson was learning to deal with the height of these new
blocks of flats  14 storeys at Forfar House, 10 storeys at Tanglin
Halt and 16 storeys at Commonwealth Close.

Or new facilities such as running water and flushing toilets,
commonplace today.

Mr Calvin Low, aged 49, moved to Tanglin Halt in 1964 when he was
five. He recalled: From afar, they looked like giant pigeonholes 
stacked-up concrete boxes, some with impressive columns of stairs
at either end  arranged with military precision on an angry, red
and ochre landscape of exposed earth.

As we approached on our rickety lorry, with all our family and
possessions in the back, the clean, sweeping lines of corridors
rising to the sky and the distinct smell of new concrete and fresh
paint brought a spring to our step. We were finally moving into our
very own flat. It may have been small, but it was our castle in the
sky.

Hailing from Kampung Batak in the Eunos-Kaki Bukit area, his family
moved to a three-room flat in an eight-storey block in Queenstown.
Id never been that high up in the air before in my life and the
adults were anxious that I didnt take a liking to peering over the
precariously thin, four-inch parapet wall for a better view,
remarked Mr Low.

Nor were they keen on him riding the lift for fun in case it got
stuck, or yelling when playing, for the neighbours were a mere
hollow concrete block thickness away.

For a long while, this was all part of the novelty of living in a
high-rise block of flats. The faces of new neighbours, the
half-finished roads and buildings in the neighbourhood, the newly
planted saplings and even the raw earth itself, awaiting
development, lent a sense of frontier fervour to the residents
lives.

It was a singular experience mirrored across a whole segment of
Singapore society who had moved from rural villages, slums and the
chronically overburdened inner city to the frontier town that
Queenstown was in the early 1960s.

For many Queenstown residents, overcrowding still remained a fact
of life. Not that they really minded. Mr Dominic Teo, 61, a retired
army regular, moved to a three-room flat in Margaret Drive in the
1950s. It was home to 16 members of his family, including Mr Teos
grandmother.

That time, I was not sleeping on a bed; I was sleeping on a plank.
My grandmother was sleeping on the bed. Still, it was better than
in the kampung. It was all muddy, and dark without street lights in
the kampung. It was cramped in our flat.

But we all didnt feel it because we were young. They would just
put down a plank and we would j ust sleep, al l squeezed together,
said Mr Teo.

When I was living in an attap kampung house, it was scary.
Because, when you hear fire engines, you worry about your house
getting burnt, he added. His wife Margaret Lim, 59, knows that
fear first-hand.

Her family survived the Bukit Ho Swee fire in 1961 and was
resettled at Strathmore Avenue in Princess Estate.

Princess Estate was also where the family of Associate Professor
Koo Tsai Kee, 53, Minister of State for Defence, moved to in 1959,
when he was five, leaving behind the Killiney Road workers
quarters where he was born.

We were on the third floor and it transformed my parents lives.
They told me because they used to have to queue for long periods to
use the toilet and then also to use the kitchen. So there was a
schedule like a military schedule.

When they moved to Queenstown in their own flat, to them it was
heaven. They had their own bedroom; own kitchen, own toilet; they
separated the toilet and the urinal. So they were very
happy.

High-rise living  a fact of life for most Singaporeans today, made
its debut in Queenstown. When the Singapore Improvement Trust (SIT)
developed its first neighbourhood in Princess Estate in the 1950s,
it built the 14-storey Forfar House, Singapores tallest housing
block at the time. It was the estates crown jewel.

Forfar House was also known as chap si lau (Hokkien for 14
storeys).

Chap si lau was also famous for another reason, said Prof
Koo.

Its called tiao lau (Hokkien for committing suicide by jumping
off a building). In those days, if people wanted to commit suicide,
they would go to a high building . So they would go to Forfar
House. That place became very famous for suicide.

Mr Ronald Pereira, 54, director of a printing company who lived in
the area since 1957 remembered stepping into Forfar House only a
couple of times for fear of the place.

I dont think suicides happened very often. People talked about
it. But it became a place youd be scared to go to. When youre a
kid, ghosts, everything comes to mind, he said.

10 Stories: Queenstown Through The Years, by Calvin Low, is
a joint collaboration between the National Heritage Board, Central
Singapore Community Development Council and Queenstown Citizens
Consultative Committee. It is on sale at major bookshops for
$30.

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